{
 "id": "walt-whitman/the-dying-veteran",
 "title": "The Dying Veteran",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 337,
 "container": "Sands at Seventy",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1888,
  "venue": "November Boughs (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1888)",
  "note": "Printed in “Sands at Seventy,” the verse section of November Boughs, and gathered into Leaves of Grass as the First Annex in 1891–92, which is the arrangement the corpus text follows. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/novemberboughs00whitrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/novemberboughs00whitgoog"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "sands-at-seventy.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 18,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 82,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Amid these days of order, ease, prosperity,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Amid the current songs of beauty, peace, decorum,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I cast a reminiscence⁠—(likely ’twill offend you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I heard it in my boyhood;)⁠—More than a generation since,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A queer old savage man, a fighter under Washington himself,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Large, brave, cleanly, hot-blooded, no talker, rather spiritualistic,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had fought in the ranks⁠—fought well⁠—had been all through the Revolutionary war,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lay dying⁠—sons, daughters, church-deacons, lovingly tending him,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sharping their sense, their ears, towards his murmuring, half-caught words:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Let me return again to my war-days,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the sights and scenes⁠—to forming the line of battle,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the scouts ahead reconnoitering,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the cannons, the grim artillery,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the galloping aids, carrying orders,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the wounded, the fallen, the heat, the suspense,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The perfume strong, the smoke, the deafening noise;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Away with your life of peace!⁠—your joys of peace!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Give me my old wild battle-life again!”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}